Pál Szinel Merse “The Balloon”

November 21 - December 21, 2020

I invite you to join me in a month-long toast: Let us raise a glass to the ones that are often the first to raise a glass to the rest of us. Here’s to the seekers, the believers, the enthusiasts, and our biggest cheerleaders—here’s to Sagittarius!

They embody the spirit of the Centaur, the race of wild and untamed human-horse hybrids, who themselves were descendants of Ixion of the fiery wheel and the cloud nymph Nephele. They are the children of fire and clouds, always moving forward, following the whims of the Wheel of Fortune: round and round it goes, where it stops, nobody knows. Their other symbol is the archer on horseback, his bowstring taut, arrow aimed in the direction of the next horizon. 

Sagittarius is ruled by Jupiter, the colossus of planets, aka Zeus, the insatiable king of the gods. Down on the world’s stage, the philosophers, jurists, activists, missionaries, superfans, evangelists, anthropologists, wayfarers, vagabonds, pilgrims and crusaders are the roles played by Jove’s faithful subjects. 

We love them for their inspiring optimism, adventurousness, passion and zeal. We don’t always love their outspokenness, capriciousness, dogmatism, or tendency to run away when the going gets tough. But the mutable fire sign has its shadows just like everyone else. They move and live according to the rhythm of a gypsy heart, which teaches them to follow the winds of change, and to know when it’s time to ramble on. 

Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who had Jupiter in Sagittarius, said, “a mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.” It’s true. Sagittarius is the part of us all that needs to have room to grow and expand, to increase and mature; that needs to step out into the Great Wide Open, and feel the wind in our hair—a reminder of promise and possibility. Travel, one of the greatest mind stretchers, is the elixir of life for Sagittarius. And if circumstances deny that possibility, then a voyage of the mind is the next best thing. Its natives need to be able to touch the foreign and the exotic to keep the soul alive and to keep stagnation at bay. 

For those born under Sagittarius, all of life is a quest; a search to find a sense of meaning in the mundane. What to make of this vast world and this curious human existence? And therein lies the formula for their success: Through EXPERIENCE one is exposed to a diversity of ideas. And from those ideas, one forms one’s own BELIEFS. For, without beliefs, one cannot ultimately have FAITH—the Sagittarian gift, and the thing that allows them to relish the unpredictability of life; to savor the constant change; to weather hard times with a “this too shall pass;” and to trust that whatever will be, will be, and that everything will work out in the end.